


Nebula, Seven Hours Later

by MissIzzy



Series: Walking Behind With a Bucket [9]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 11:26:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15773175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissIzzy/pseuds/MissIzzy
Summary: Might as well help her new companion get home.





	Nebula, Seven Hours Later

Nebula has to give Tony Stark this: he caught on really quickly. Most people who have never engaged in space travel need at least a few days to wrap their heads around the way it works. It wasn’t at all long after they’d boarded the  _Milano_  that he was looking over the Jump Points right alongside her, doing the calculations related to speed and distance faster than she could, even arguing with her about how safe certain jumps might be.

But even with the both of them working together, Earth isn’t the easiest planet to get to if you don’t have cosmic-level powers at your disposal. Very few planets whose inhabitants didn’t travel off it are. Until they’re annexed by an interplanetary power, but Earth’s enjoyed Asgardian protection, and possibly further protection from the group that Strange guy was from. That limits the number of people who’ve had reason to go there. There have been enough that it’s got a Jump Point, but it’s not a very well-connected one.

For the moment they’ve actually set a course to the Hub, since the  _Milano_  needs to resupply, and Nebula has a hunch that by the time they get there, the lower levels, at least, will have more or less returned to business as usual. Stark’s desperate to get back to his home world, but he’s nonetheless betrayed some fascination with both the station and the many planets and systems they’ve looked at potentially traveling through.

Also her various implants, but it didn’t take her long to get him to stop eyeing them. Just a few details about how she got them did the trick there, even if it also resulted in him babbling a bit about his arc reactor, mostly, she thinks, to distract himself from being horrified. She knows what sort of guy he is. They pop up everywhere in the universe.

The upcoming jump has a tricky entrance, but they’re letting the autopilot take them up to it, and they’re both of them sitting on the floor with different routes back to Earth projected above them. It’s an interface style Stark’s actually more used to than her, easily waving his hands about to pull different systems out into prominence. “We could get to this one within two days if we just do a set of sixty jumps at once. Are you sure we can’t? What difference can ten jumps make?”

Nebula once did ninety jumps at once. It came back to her mind when Thanos was torturing her. Now she says, “Keep talking like that and I’ll insist we lower it down to forty.”

Stark sulks for a moment, giving her time to project out one system. “There’s more than one way to speed yourself up. We go through the Liest system, with the pair of gas giants about as close to their star as you find those…”

“Don’t you want to get there fast, too?” Stark blurts out angrily. “It’s Thanos’ last known location, right?”

Nebula shakes her head. “Either he’s dead, or he’s gone from it by now, armed with the entire gauntlet, and I don’t think we can even find him then, let alone do anything to him.”

She lets herself slump as she says it, because it brings home the truth to her: she has no purpose left in life now.

_You can stay with us and help them,_  she hears Gamora say in her head. Well, she’s dead now, and so are all but possibly two of her friends, but she supposes there are now victims of Thanos everywhere who need help. Except it’s the kind of help she has no skill in giving.

At least she can get this stranded Terran home. Her words must have made Stark feel helpless as well, because now he just looks stricken. She stands up, hovering her hands over Liest’s gas giants.

“That’s not all that’s close to this star. There’s lots of different types of loose gas around as well. You could probably figure the science out better from reading about it than my explanations. Suffice to say this ship's abilities include that of spewing a large cloud of sulfur dioxide out the back. Most of the time this would be a very stupid to do, and that includes in this situation, because of the explosion it would cause where there’s a small chance it could kill us, but harness it right, and we would go at five times the ship’s maximum speed, and we could maintain it for nearly eight days standard while going through up to nearly two hundred jump points-not all of them at once,” she finishes before he can even think about it.

“That could get us all the way to Calurnia,” says Stark, his mind clearly working quickly. “From there it we can jump to Paramater in another six days, from there to Hala…”

“And from there to Earth.” Normally Nebula wouldn’t like getting near the Kree homeworld, but hey, they wouldn’t be back at full strength yet anyway. “It’d take a little more than a month.”

“That’s really the best I’m going to get, isn’t it?” Stark sounds resigned. There’s no way he doesn’t realize how lucky they are to have found that short a route.

“It is,” she replies, as the  _Milano_ ’s systems beep. “We’re nearly at the Jump Point.”

“Let me fly it,” Stark says, getting up with her. “I’m going to have to do some hard flying anyway, I mean, you’re not going to try to hold the wheel at Ludicrous Speed for eight days straight without sleeping, right? Even I know that would be an idiotic thing to do.”

She’s pretty sure he’s not telling the entire truth on that last part, but she doesn’t care. “You’ll fly through a more normal Jump Point first; there are plenty of those. I’m doing this one. Stand behind me- _don’t_  get too close, and don’t talk; I don’t want to be distracted while doing this. I’m hoping you’re smart enough to know when it’s time to watch.”


End file.
